a city and a mint who sleep very little between them

[self_composed]

Bella bikes to the airport on Friday. She gets a little reading done on her flight, then sleeps-on-purpose through the remainder of the trip, waking up precisely when the plane touches down. One nice bonus that she didn't even explicitly build into the power is that she can sleep at will in virtually any position; she doesn't have to get comfy if that's not convenient.

She steps off the plane, backpack full of her things over her shoulders, and stalks into the halls of LaGuardia, eyes peeled for Libby.

Comments

[edgeofyourseat]

"How's your Crime Globe going to tell what's a crime and what's not?"

[self_composed]

"Well, it'd have a list. The Magic Globe can tell what's a coin and what's not; if I give a Crime Globe enough juice it can probably tell what's an instance of puppy-kicking and what's not. I'd miss things not on the list, but it can be revised if I think of more stuff or if unanticipated problems crop up. There are probably some things I can't produce a rigorous definition of," she admits. "Like, I bet magic can tell if somebody is hitting somebody else and check for consent, and even if they're fudging consent with psychological tricks somehow, they probably won't fool the surveillance every time. But I don't know if I can find a similar criterion to positively identify emotional abuse, or whatever. I think there I'm falling back on the fix-underlying-incentives thing. If citizens are independent of each other - if the victim can just move into the next apartment and lock the door and not worry about where dinner's coming from - that at least puts a ceiling on that. Maybe it should be possible for people to 'block' each other."

[edgeofyourseat]

"So you want your Space Empire to be the Internet."

[self_composed]

Bella considers this.

"That is a reasonable summary."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Awesome."

[self_composed]

Bella programs with half her brain, procedural generation of Martian city and terrain to wish real upon a star when she's done. She thinks of rules and edge cases and fixes for them with most of the other half. Some of her is doing mental resource allocation - that's not automatic, she has to keep an eye on it. She can carry on charming conversation and skim the contents of Alice's brain with slightly less than one full original-Bella's worth of attention. "I think so, yes. It's not designed for you to live there, but you can live wherever you like, and you are a very uncommon sort of person."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Well, yeah, of course I'm not gonna live there."

The very thought makes him consider rains of jellybeans.

[prima_sequentem]

"I think it sounds like a fine place to be. A little dull, maybe, but with potential."

[self_composed]

"Yeah, of course. I'm installing constraints; those shrink the theoretical amount of stuff that can happen. I think as long I shrink it in the right direction, it will not shrink the actual upper bound of quality of stuff, but it'll have to happen a little differently. Alice, on the other hand, just isn't happy unless someone could abruptly decide to hit him in the face with a baseball bat, and that is one of the things I'm shrinking away from possibility-space on Mars."

[prima_sequentem]

"That's an interesting preference," Libby observes.

[edgeofyourseat]

"I like surprises."

[self_composed]

Typetytypetytypety. Bella finishes a program that will write parts of another program, starts it, magics it to go *faster*, and then starts editing what it spits out. "So Libby, tell me who you'd recommend for staff and first-wave colonists. Gonna need a medic, a complaints department to sort and condense and address some of same before they get to me, enterprising businesspeople who aren't too odious for me to stand them to start up miscellaneous productive enterprises so the city isn't just empty when people appear - hm, will I need my own currency? Or is it possible for independent nations to co-opt US dollars? - and I will need an immigration department and public relations people and, oh, probably actual diplomats sooner or later. And assorted multitalented folks to slot in wherever there are unexpected needs."

[prima_sequentem]

"Invent your own currency. Bella Swan's Space Empire is not America. Also, call it something more interesting and less megalomaniacal than Bella Swan's Space Empire."

[self_composed]

"What was my alternate universe version calling hers?" Bella asks. "And I know it's not America, but starting with US dollars would make transaction costs lower, and I am starting with Anglophones... Meh. I'll just fix the exchange rate at one to one to start with and that should accomplish most of the same. I'm so tempted to make the coins look like wishcoins..."

[prima_sequentem]

"Don't make the coins look like wishcoins," Libby advises. "She called it the Golden Empire. Do you feel like a Golden Empire sort of person?"

[self_composed]

"...No? Why did she call it that?" asks Bella. "Hm. Is there some reason most real coins are round?"

[prima_sequentem]

"I have no idea why she called it that. And I think coins are round because it's easy to make them that way and easy to handle them."

[self_composed]

"I might just go with all paper instead anyway," muses Bella. "Or all virtual. No physical instantiation at all. Swan Empire? Empire of the Stars? I think I like Empire of the Stars. Nice bit of wordplay. Tell me about your people."

[prima_sequentem]

Personnel. Now that is Libby's specialty.